This invention relates to a circuit element mounting system, and more particularly to a system which is adapted to control a circuit element mounting head by means of circuit element mounting data fed from a computer aided design device without modifying the data to efficiently mount circuit elements on a substrate.
Conventionally, the mounting of circuit elements such as a capacitor, a resistor, a transistor and the like on a substrate or printed circuit board has been carried out according to a mesh method. More particularly, the mesh method superposes, on a printed circuit board, a net of meshes corresponding to intervals of pins of an IC to mount circuit elements on intersections in the net. Unfortunately, the mesh method has a disadvantage that useless spaces are significantly produced on the printed circuit board because the circuit elements are mounted on only the intersections, resulting in a failure to mount in high density or concentration.
Also, in the conventional mounting operation, a step of automatically designing, by means of a computer aided design device (hereinafter referred to as "CAD device"), a printed circuit or an arrangement of circuit elements, conductor patterns and the like on a printed circuit board depending upon circuit-forming conditions such as area of the printed circuit board, types of circuit elements, the number of circuit elements and the like according to a circuit diagram, has been practiced separately from a step of mounting, by means of an automatic mounting apparatus, the circuit elements on the printed circuit board formed with the conductor patterns, so that data obtained from the CAD device was not substantially utilized for the mounting.